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Presentation Paradox – MSNBC
Oh dear, you probably should not have gone there…
Stacey Abrams made an appearance with Chris Hayes to clear up her name as it has been exposed that she was part of a group receiving USAID funds. Trump dropped her name during his Tuesday night speech to Congress, so Hayes dutifully brought Abrams on to spin her way out. Instead, she may have dug herself deeper in the hole.
After Hayes set the table to claim her program was saving money, Abrams explained her efforts were to set people up with appliances that were energy efficient and lowered electric bills. So she was doling out free refrigerators in choice locations, which sounds like some severe favoritism and vote purchasing.
Then she goes on to say that they wanted to expand this program into millions of homes. Hayes wants to claim this saves money, yet with these green refrigerators costing in the $3,000 range, you are talking about billions of government dollars spent to hand out free refrigerators, as well as other appliances. And we are supposed to believe there would be no graft and influence involved in this scam.
The EPA-Stacey Abrams grift revealed: @staceyabrams just told MSBNC's @chrislhayes that the Biden EPA gave her $2 billion to buy people new home appliances to reduce electric bills. So Democrats upgraded vote buying from Obama phones to Biden refrigerators. pic.twitter.com/mO0dEFOXmj
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) March 7, 2025
Prose & Contradiction – THE SUN
Once again, a journalist denigrates his own profession to slam a Republican.
It was with great amusement that we watched the press attempt to insult the selection of Pete Hegseth to head the Defense Department. He was a decorated veteran with decades of experience, but he was unqualified for the role because he was described as being only a TV pundit – according to the TV pundits.
Now, we have another media member attempting a similar insult on JD Vance, and the rake stepping is a marvel. British media fixture Tom Newton Dunn is apparently bothered that the vice president invokes his military service. Dunn tries to diminish his record by saying that Vance “only” served for four years, and he was not technically in the field of battle, he was a lowly journalist…so says this British journalist.
A little known fact about JD Vance, his time as a US Marine and his 6 month deployment to Iraq (which he regularly reminds everyone about): he only did 4 years in the corps, and his specialist trade was as a military journalist writing articles, a non-combat role.
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) March 5, 2025
Low-Octane Gaslighting – THE DAKOTA SCOUT
Is an itemized list of your claims too much to ask?
Kristi Noem has sent out cease and desist letters to this local state paper, as well as other news outlets, repeating a claim on her use of government funds. This independent news outlet contends that as governor, Noem misappropriated public funds by ringing up charges totaling $650,000 over the span of years on a state-issued credit card. Noem, however, is battling back by explaining this was not abuse in the form of making personal purchases but was, in fact, official business expenses incurred by the entire office across a number of cards. The outlet remains defiant and published a new report with an even higher total, and explains itself by stating these were not for wardrobe or flower purchases but consisted mostly of official travel expenses and the cost for her security detail.
Fox Digital learned that Noem's legal team plans to send similar cease-and-desist letters to other outlets characterizing the $650,000 in expenditures were made specifically by the former governor.https://t.co/Uj7OqpIOyJ
— Benjamin G. Koisti (@Ben_Koisti) March 7, 2025
Artisanally-Crafted Narratives – THE NEW YORK TIMES / NBC NEWS
With the emergence of Elon Musk as a player in the Donald Trump administration, we have seen the media consistently making the effort to create internal drama and division between the two men. The ploy seems to be centered on the belief that Trump’s ego is so fragile that he will lash out at anyone making an incursion on his media attention, and so, desperate unfounded reports have been seen on the regular attempting to generate this conflict between them, or inside the White House staff. They keep failing.
There has even been evidence of collusion in the media ranks, as seen when Time Magazine put Musk on the cover, shown sitting at the Resolute Desk, and then other outlets tried to drive a wedge based on that attempt. That effort has been tried once again.
The New York Times came out with a report, based on nameless sources (five people with knowledge of the events), that there was a tense-filled meeting in the Oval Office where Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were verbally combating, requiring the president to step in and quell the anger. When the president was asked about this contentious meeting:
🚨 President Trump just SLAMMED a fake news NBC reporter for claiming there was a “CLASH” between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio during a cabinet meeting
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) March 7, 2025
“No clash. I was there. You're just a troublemaker”
They’re trying SO hard to rip Elon and Trump apart, and it ain’t working.… pic.twitter.com/QhNmrypSAk
Reporting on the Mirror – CNN
Could this be a sign that a dawning is coming over the network executives?
Over the past few weeks, we have covered how CNN has been going through a raft of changes. Layoffs, contracts being slashed, the lineup being juggled, and Jim Acosta being sent off have all signaled the problems at the distant third place news network as it slides further down in the ratings. That is why this latest announcement is all the more enlightening.
Over the past year, one of the few bright spots on CNN has been the rise of conservative pundit Scott Jennings. He sits on numerous panels and calmly eviscerates leftist talking points with aplomb and good humor. The network clearly recognizes that he is drawing in viewers with these regular battles, as well as delivering near-daily viral moments that are shared across social media, and as a result, he has been the recipient of a rarity at the network these days: He not only has renewed a contract but will be seeing a significant boost in pay as well.
CNN to hand pro-Trump pundit Scott Jennings big pay raise as part of new deal: report https://t.co/dztNx0fjtt pic.twitter.com/Jzfwtp9rBq
— New York Post (@nypost) March 7, 2025
Both Kinds of Standards — NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
- It's only wrong to retweet conservatives, it seems.
NPR's media guru David Folkenflik is apparently bothered to see the owner of the Los Angeles Times retweeting in an inappropriate fashion. (“Inappropriate” as determined by David, of course). He saw Patrick Soon-Shiong commenting on a video where former NIH Director Francis Collins was at an anti-Trump rally. The comment was not the issue we gathered, just that Soon-Shiong had retweeted the post made by conservative firebrand Mike Cernovich.
To clarify, the paper's owner was commenting on the video, and Cernovich made no real commentary, but David saw this as some sort of egregious act, implying that the head of a news outlet should not be reposting content from questionably biased sources.
This would be the same Folkenflik, for the record, who defended the head of his own news outlet when she was found to have been reposting content from questionably biased sources.
He was retweeting a video of a news event with a former NIH director.
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) March 8, 2025
I recall when we were not supposed to be upset about what the directors of news outlets put out on social media. https://t.co/SE5pki6R60 pic.twitter.com/ECGIOOVYzl
